GOP civil war threatens governance

Updated 2:54 pm, Thursday, October 8, 2015

House Majority Leader of Kevin McCarthy of Calif. walks out of nomination vote meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday after dropping out of the race to replace House Speaker John Boehner.

House Majority Leader of Kevin McCarthy of Calif. walks out of nomination vote meeting on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday after dropping out of the race to replace House Speaker John Boehner.

Photo: Evan Vucci /Associated Press

GOP civil war threatens governance

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The forces undoing the man thought to be House Speaker John Boehner’s successor are the same that drove Boehner out.

There is a civil war under way in the GOP, the House’s Republican caucus just being the most glaring example at the moment. How that war gets resolved in the House will determine in significant ways whether Congress governs or simply careens from one crisis to another, taking the country along with it.

That likely successor, Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, abruptly withdrew from the race for the speakership on Thursday. He had already disqualified himself from that post by acknowledging recently what so many have long known.

The House GOP’s fixation with Benghazi and Hillary Clinton is nothing more than an ongoing attempt to derail the person considered the Democrat’s strongest presidential candidate.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right? But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping. Why? Because she’s untrustworthy. But no one would have known any of that had happened, had we not fought,” McCarthy told Fox News’ Sean Hannity.

This statement speaks more broadly to the roots of congressional dysfunction — political advantage valued over common good and more importance placed on saying “no” rather than, “let’s talk and find some middle ground.”

There is no middle ground for the so-called Freedom Caucus, that group of 30 or 40 Republicans who undid Bohner and whose ideologies and blatant disdain for the president and Democrats generally foreclose on meaningful legislation.

They are outnumbered by other Republicans but these live in fear of them anyway. Openly fighting them — or cooperating with Democrats to cobble together enough votes for anything — means inviting a tea-party challenge.

So, needed: A GOP candidate for speaker who realizes that working with the minority party to achieve legislation is properly called governance, not treason.

And, with McCarthy’s withdrawal, we have the same question now as when Boehner announced his resignation — who and what next?

Surely there must be someone in the House’s majority party interested in governing. And there must be enough House Republicans with backbone enough to push back against the caucus of “no” to install this person.

If there aren’t, Americans should genuinely be concerned about trustworthiness — not Clinton’s but that of the House as an institution.